


I Can Save Him

by BrokenHazelEyes



Series: OT4- Greg/Ed/Sam/Spike [7]
Category: Flashpoint
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Bombs, Disobeying Orders, Episode: s02e10 One Wrong Move, Fix-It, Hurt Spike, Inaccuracies, Lou Lives, Major Character Injury, Minor Injuries, OOC, Other, Protective Ed, Protective Greg, Protective Sam, Spike Whump, Spike is a BAMF, Spoilers, Yelling, landmines, sorry - Freeform, threatened suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 16:49:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4270692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrokenHazelEyes/pseuds/BrokenHazelEyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I need you to promise me that, if you can’t find a way to disable this landmine, you will get out of the blast zone and not place yourself in danger.” Lou breathed out, and Spike’s head snapped up with rage written across his usually cheerful face.<br/>“Turn off your radio.” Spike told him cuttingly, reaching down to turn off his own, and Lou’s chest stilled with a single shockwave of movement but he obeyed and turned his off too. There was no cheating, no pretending, because this was Spike, and Lou would do anything for him. <br/>“Listen to me, Lewis.” Spike breathed out, stabbing the knife into the sand, “I’m not going to leave you to blow yourself up, do you understand me?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Can Save Him

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again, lovely readers! I hope you enjoy this--because most of it was written in the middle of the night and I can't be held responsible for my actions at 3 am. So, read with caution I suppose. I would adore any feedback, and it's very appreciated--you have no clue. Anyway, enjoy, and I shall see you in the next installment! (...hopefully). 
> 
> A/N: I do not own Flashpoint, or the characters or the episode "One Wrong Move" or anything that was written in that episode. I do not make any profits from my writing, but it is still my writing so please don't repost anywhere. Thank you.

Moving with deliberate actions, Spike stood on the ledge before the gravel and smiled reassuringly at Lou with the underground scanner gripped tightly in one hand. Everything was narrowing down into tunnel vision, brain switching channels to the cold calculations of bomb disabling and away from the tracks that led to panic. He switched the machine on, sweeping the ground before slowly placing his foot down and continuing towards his best friend. Gravel shifted beneath his heavy boots, and the bomb tech wished it would just swallow him whole because he didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be curled up in a corner, away from the truth of terror, where evil couldn’t grab him and take the oxygen from his lungs like payment for his happiness. He didn’t want to be here, not when his mind was whispering _it should have been **you**_ and his soul could only agree brokenly like a beaten child.

The beeps were like pace makers for his heart, and the bomb tech knew that it would never regain its steady pace again—not when he’d seen this, been forced to walk towards his friend who literally stood on the edge of certain death. He wouldn’t recover from this, because his mind was unraveling and his core was shining instead of the paper-Mache personality he’d slathered on; the core that said I will give my life for him.

“Having a fun time lazing around over there, Lou?” Spike joked as he got closer, the thick Kevlar making the fabric of his gear sticky with sweat and stick to his skin. His gear felt like the hands of the damned, trying to drag him down to a place of false security where Lou wasn’t in danger and his friends and lovers weren’t watching his life being placed in peril from afar.

“Oh yeah,” Lou answered back, standing tall and still like the statue of a vengeful angel, “having a lot of fun. You should try it some time.”

“I’ll remember that,” Spike laughed gently, snorting out a breath, and lowered his gear when he’d finished skimming the area and it was dotted with markers.

“Take the bomb out of here first,” Lou said quickly, and Spike held his gaze with uncertainty, so the other man continued, “Just, in case, okay? We need to be as careful as possible.”

“Yeah, we do,” Spike said quietly, and he hauled the disabled bomb into his arms and made his way to the disposal truck before calling back to Lou. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Lou answered back, and watched Spike brush past Greg, Ed and Sam like they were strangers and not the men who held his heart. It tore at him, to know that Spike’s angry, jerky movements were his fault and when Greg lurched back at something the bomb tech said…Lou knew that was his fault, too.

The Italian was storming back, arms empty, but he brightened up when he got closer—fake, Lou groaned to himself, he was faking it.

“Spike, buddy,” Lou swallowed the lump in his throat as Spike stopped next to him, “you have to promise me something, okay?”

“Sh,” Spike waved his hand vaguely, pulling his gear closer and grabbing his knife from its sheath before kneeling next to Lou’s boot. “I need to…”

“ **I** need you to promise me that, if you can’t find a way to disable this landmine, you will get out of the blast zone and not place yourself in danger.” Lou breathed out, and Spike’s head snapped up with rage written across his usually cheerful face.

“Turn off your radio.” Spike told him cuttingly, reaching down to turn off his own, and Lou’s chest stilled with a single shockwave of movement but he obeyed and turned his off too. There was no cheating, no pretending, because this was Spike, and Lou would do anything for him.

“Listen to me, Lewis.” Spike breathed out, stabbing the knife into the sand, “I’m not going to leave you to blow yourself up, do you understand me?”

“Spike—,” Lou tried, his mind grinding its gears at the use of his first name.

“I know what you’re trying to do. If you step off that mine while I’m out of range in some half-assed attempt to _protect me_ ,” Spike seethed, and then took a breath and went on calmly, finality thick in his speech, “I will take my gun and put a bullet in my head.”

Lou couldn’t talk; his throat was raw, his lips were numb, and his mind was frozen.

“So,” Spike continued, “there’s your motivation for standing still and not do anything stupid. Now shut up, and let me do my damn job. I’m not losing you, not today and not _ever_.” With that, the bomb tech switched back on his radio—ignoring the angered shouts of Ed and the stern reprimanding by Greg.

Following his lead, Lou switched back on his radio but his fingers were clumsy and stiff. He was staring, unblinking, at the support beam before him as Spike gently pulled the gravel away from his boot and the landmine.

“Keep your foot still, okay?” Spike told him, and it was back to the normal voice—though it was laden with worry and anxiety. There was no fire-y expression of a man possessed, no dark voice that Lou knew would haunt him until his final days and then would follow him to the grave. There was no crack in the façade he’d thrown up; no signs of the man threatening suicide.

“Yeah,” Lou tried to keep his voice steady, mind still reeling, “Okay. Got it.” The bomb tech in training wasn’t sure what he was responding to; the order, or Spike’s threat.

Spike examined the mine, now visible without the layers of pebbles, and laid down to get himself lower. His eyes traced every nanometer, solutions running through his head like wild animals and expected problems leapt to take them down like hounds released on the hunt. His entire body was tensed, because there was really only one good option and if that wasn’t possible then his world was going to crash and burn at his feet.

Barely visible, the tiny hole looked like a mere blemish on the weapon but it made the bomb tech’s heart clench as he breathed into his headset with a cracking voice.

“I found the safety.”

“Can you re-pin it?” Lou asked before anyone else could, cutting off the beginnings of Sam’s voice, and Spike grinned—truly grinned—up at his best friend.

“Yeah, I think so.” His words, more air than syllables, sounded as reverent as words spoken to a deity.

“Thinking’s not really enough, Spike,” Greg said gruffly into the radio, “Are you _sure_?”

“It’s possible to pin it, there’s nothing wrong with the safety; it’s just tricky.” Spike responded, “I can do it, boss.”

It was silent, and Spike pushed himself up so he could grab his bag and searched for the pins he had. Lou was still quiet, but he spoke up.

“I think they turned the radios off.”

“Or switched channels,” Spike offered, swinging back around to get another look at the pin-hole before letting his hands disappear back into the bag.

“Spike,” the voices appeared back on the radio, strained, and it was Sam this time, “You need to come back. We need to talk this over, look at what we’re facing, before you jump headlong into this, okay?” The blonde asked, begging, but Spike shook his head and grabbed the box of pins from the bottom of the bag before popping the lid open and eyeing the different makes.

“Spike, get back here,” Greg barked, “That’s an order!”

The bomb tech looked up, peering at the team where he could see his sergeant holding his binoculars, and just appraised them before going back to what he was doing.

“SPIKE!” Ed screamed over the comms, and Lou winced lightly as the voice crumbled into static at the volume, “Officer Scarlatti, you are disobeying a direct order from your sergeant.”

“Yeah, I am,” Spike spoke flatly, drawing out a pin from the box with hope on his lips, “You can punish me later, kick me off the team—whatever.” Then the bomb tech’s eyes furrowed, scoffing at himself, “Dad would be happy, if you did that.”

“Hey, don’t think about him,” Lou tried to find his voice, “Did you find the right pin?” He didn’t try to fight Spike, tell him to listen to Greg and Ed and leave because this was Spike and it was of no use. This was his best friend, the man he’d die for and knew—with the proof burning his irises—that the bomb tech would do—was doing—the exact same.

“Yeah, the closest one I could find,” Spike nodded, lowering himself back down with the pin securely between his fingers. “Guess I’m going to have to go shopping later, huh, buddy?”

“I guess,” Lou smiled, falling back into the easy banter, “You going to drag me with you?”

“Of course,” Spike said, pulling more gravel away, “now, I need you to stand as still as possible. When I get this pin in, just keep standing, okay? Don’t move until I tell you to.”

“Got it,” Lou clenched his hands, and didn’t comment when Spike turned off his radio again. He could hear the shouting without it—and Lou’s eardrums were threatening to explode because it was ten times as loud on the radio. Desperate, frantic, angry, too many emotions to keep a count of. They marred all the voices.

Spike’s hands didn’t tremble, and his heart didn’t threaten to beat out of his chest, because this was a black and white situation. Either he failed, or he succeeded.

The pin, a delicate piece of metal, rested gently on the rim of the safety as Spike braced his knees and raised his upper body up a bit so he could get more leverage. He’d done this a thousand times in practice, he’d played with grenades as a teen to see what he could do, and he’d dreamed of this since he was a child playing with camper fuel. But he’d never done any of it with his best friend’s life on the line.

Drawing in a breath and letting it out, Spike kept the pin straight as he slowly pushed it towards the center of the mine—the world staying silent, the voices of the team blurred as he focused in on his job. Just another job. Just another day.

Then, there was a click. The pin slipped into place, and Lou felt the spikes sink a little as he squeezed his eyes shut. But there was nothing. No noise, no pain, no burning sensation or even a burst of light. The world was silent like frost on the grass in the early November mornings.

Spike slumped against the gravel, resisting the urge to dry-heave, and breathed in the dusty air as Lou let his eyes slide open.

“Spike, buddy?” The man asked with a cracking voice, and the bomb tech pushed himself off the ground and upright as Lou’s legs threatened to buckle below him.

“Did it,” Spike laughed, eyes tearful, “I did it. Landmine disabled.”

“Yeah,” Lou said exhaustedly, “you did it, buddy.”

The bomb tech didn’t bother gathering up his gear, he just walked up to Lou’s side and slung an arm over his shoulder before they walked hip to hip over the gravel and towards the team. The further they got, the more weight Spike had to take but the tech wasn’t complaining. The team raced to meet them, and Lou collapsed to the ground as his knees finally buckled and Spike sunk down with him.

There was a paramedic making their way over with a stretcher, and Spike went to push himself off the ground but Lou grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back down—wrapping around him and pressing his face into the Italian’s pale neck. Tears were threatening to fall, but he had to stay strong.

_Don’t ever say something like that again_ , Lou whispered so low that it sounded like a leaf fluttering on the breeze, but Spike seemed to make sense of the sentence mouthed sloppily against his skin and nodded.

Reluctantly, Lou let go of Spike and let paramedics check him over as the bomb tech stepped away from the stretcher and looked at the gravel where he’d came from.

“I need to go disable the rest of those,” Spike said as he walked up to Greg, refusing to look him in the eyes, “then—,”

He didn’t get the chance to finish, as Greg grabbed Spike by the chest and kept him there with a hand against his neck. Another set of arms grabbed him from behind, a masculine body molding to the curves of his back, and a third was holding his hips just below where the Kevlar stopped. There wasn’t any yelling, no reprimands, there was just warm skin and scratchy gear as Spike leaned against them and tried to still his chest—the ribs shivering with each constricted breath he drew in.

The rest of the team turned their attention to Lou, giving the four their space, and the senior police officers ordered their subordinates calmly like team one’s unflappable leader wasn’t clutching his bomb tech like a child holds a blanket in the wake of a nightmare.

“Spike,” Ed exhaled against the back of the man’s neck, and that was enough. The two other men clutched the Italian closer, but didn’t say anything so Spike swallowed his guilt and broke the silence.

“We—we can go over this later at the debrief,” Spike told them, and tried to untangle himself from the mess of limbs and clenched hands, “Right now, I need to go finish pinning the rest of those mines, I need to go finish my job.”

They weren’t willing to let go so easily, and Greg pulled Spike so tight to his chest that the bomb tech’s jaw was pressed too tight against the Kevlar guarding his shoulder to speak.

“No, we almost lost both of you,” Sam said darkly, “Just… You just got back.”

“I know what pin I need,” Spike said and gasped for air as Greg hesitantly loosened his grip, “There’s six of them left, it won’t take that long.”

“Can’t you stay a little longer?” Ed asked, but Spike shook his head.

“I want to get this done before the sun goes down.”

Greg pulled back from the embrace and ran a hand over his face, torn between his need to protect Spike and the knowledge that the bomb tech was right; that was his place on the team, to do jobs like this and he had no professional reason to keep him back.

“Yeah,” Greg nodded disjointedly, “okay. Be careful, alright? And no switching off the radio.”

Spike looked just over Greg’s head, his words to Lou bleeding into his mind like a gunshot wound—the one he’d threatened, “I promise.” The one thing he hadn’t been able to give Lou, the two little words that he’d thrown away in place of a threat.

Ed let go next, blue eyes searching, but he had a mask drawn over his face and Spike saw his team leader and not his lover.

“I promise,” Spike said with more force, “I’ll be careful. It’ll be okay. _I’ll_ be okay.”

Sam didn’t seem to want to let go, and his hands were shaking on Spike’s hips, but the man turned his worry into a boiling anger that he could survive with and the blonde stalked off towards one of the SUVs while ripping off his gloves.

There was nothing left to say, nothing left to express, so Spike pushed away from the knots of people and walked back towards the scene and the gear he’d left behind. Each step towards the site was a step weighed down by cement blocks; every blink was a nanosecond where Lou’s blood was painting the gravel and every twinge of his muscles was a moment where he was on his knees—screaming, distraught, his parts falling out of place like the parts of the landmine slipping into gear.

He carefully navigated his way towards his bag, grabbing another pin and his knife before working his way towards one of the red markers and kneeling beside it. He felt like Lou’s hand was on his neck, his warm fingers rubbing circles in Spike’s hair, like the protective big brother he’d always been. But he was alone, save for the radio, with the field of markers and the imprints of two pairs of boots leading back towards deliverance; towards his lovers—who would never be the same, just like him—towards his brother—the only one who’d heard him falling to pieces and ready to make a deal with the Devil—, towards his household that was more like battle zone than anything he’d encountered today.

It got easier with each landmine he disabled, the pins gratefully slipping home, and the sun was just fluttering on the horizon like it was waiting for the grand ending.

Spike rose to his full height, licking his dry lips, and collected the disabled landmines into his hands before heading towards the disposal truck—his mind was light, his footsteps unchained, his gaze focused lovingly on Greg, Sam and Ed even though he knew there would be yelling and reprimands later.

He didn’t even hear the explosion, or feel the buffeting heatwave that threw him off his feet and crumbled him to the floor. His body slammed into the pavement, the landmines rolling away from him, and he tried to curl up into a ball as he rolled along the ground. Spike’s head slammed in the ground, and dots danced painfully in his vision, and there was a sharp snap of something and liquid agony seeped into his arm. The heat—rough, ragged—painted his exposed flesh and tore at his clothes as the dust and debris sunk from the air down to the cold ground below his body.

Copper was on his tongue, dripping onto his lips, and Spike tried to push himself up but his body screamed in protest and a set of hands—searching, running across his body with hapless prayers—held him down. The voice was Ed’s, just as rough as the cement below his head, but Spike’s eyes refused to open and he knew, but unable to act, that sleep was trying to take him away.

“Spike,” Ed barked, “Stay awake, okay buddy? You’re fine, just stay awake for me. Awake, Spike!”

The bomb tech tried to speak back, eyes just slits that felt glued shut, but more blood slipped down his throat and the muscles of his face were lax and overheated.

Another pair of feet pounded closer, and someone fell to their knees beside him as Spike’s fingers twitched and he tried to grab onto something.

A warm hand gently grasped Spike’s, and the voices were so muddled the bomb tech couldn’t figure out who was talking or what they wanted. He couldn’t fight it anymore; couldn’t escape the slumber that his body was rudely demanding. The bomb tech’s brain wasn’t even screeching over the appearance of yet another bomb, working over options and solutions like he’d trained himself to do, because the darkness was pulling at the back of his throbbing skull.

Spike wanted to apologize, because he knew he needed to stay awake but he was slipping too fast and he couldn’t hold on anymore. A few sets of hands lifted him off the ground, but his limbs slipped away from him limply—hanging off the stretcher until someone righted them—and his head rolled to the side.

Then, all he knew was sleep.

 

* * *

 

Greg sat, head pillowed in his hands, in the hospital chair with Ed and Sam on either side and the team spread around them. There was no need for words; their throats were bleeding and dry from the screams as they’d seen Spike’s body crumple in the explosion that no one had expected.

Silence, and then the explosion and Spike hadn’t been moving and then were was the screaming—the ambulance sirens piercing the air as a paramedic paced, waiting for the all clear so they could race over.

Now, with Spike lying all alone in some hospital bed, they were here.

“He’ll be okay,” The doctor said when he came out of the doors—the gate between the living and the dead. “Minor injuries,” They heard like they were underwater, “very lucky.”

They collapsed against each other—their knees bruised and aching from where they’d collapsed like puppets following Spike’s lead—and Lou sobbed into his hands as the emotions welled up inside and threatened to become yet another bomb.

The bomb tech’s best friend wanted to rip open his skin and place Spike’s words from today far away from sight and stitch himself up like it would fix everything but nothing could do such a thing. He’d carry that scene for the rest of his life; the threat of suicide and then Spike’s limb body thrown to the floor against his will.

Lou looked at Greg and Sam and Ed, curling further into himself, and squeezed his eyes shut.

He’d tell them eventually, but not right now.

Now was not the time. ~~Just like today wasn't Spike's time.~~

 

 

 

 


End file.
